Manufacturing is becoming more sophisticated every day reflecting the drive to reduce size, weight and therefore, cost of products while maintaining quality. To do so, products may be manufactured with tight tolerances and that in certain instances requires special fasteners and tools.
For example in the automotive industry, the typical architecture has over 2500 hex fasteners (i.e. screws, bolts or nuts) that are utilized. Coupling the vast number of fasteners with a myriad of unique constrained fastener access scenarios make it a cumbersome task to assemble a tool that can complete assembly.
Thus, it is desirable to address these issues and produce an improved product without production delays by developing systems and methods to construct specialized tools to reach a particular fastener in a location with complex or otherwise constrained access. The term “constrained access” as used hereinafter is expressly defined as “access to a fastener that is obscured or otherwise indeterminable by a human based on readily available information including direct observation and/or direct measurement.”
Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.